The use of voice to text dictation systems has slowly but steadily seen growth over the last ten years. What was a niche product is now starting to gain traction in multiple industries, including medicine, law, accounting, sales among others. However, the system is still extremely cumbersome and frustrating. Due to issues relating to articulation errors, background and ambient noise, difficulty with single phonemes as well as linkages into the receptor computer, voice to text dictation systems have yet to fully reveal their great promise. There are several factors that continue to pose challenges from a work flow and logistics standpoint. Chief among these factors is the microphone system currently required to provide the inputs into the voice engine. A wired, handheld microphone is still seen as the highest quality input device; this necessarily limits the accessibility of the device and its overall capability for utilization. Further, such microphones are relatively heavy, require the use of manual input controls and require placement near the mouth for optimal input quality. All of these factors contribute to the fatigue that the user generally experiences with such input systems.
Beyond these limitations, others exist. The dictation system has difficulty interpreting the natural flow of free speech; one must train their voice to follow the cadence optimization for the most accurate interpretation of the voice engine. In some cases, this optimization is seen in a colorimetric bar which responds to the vocal inputs in a real time fashion. This feedback is reasonable, but serves to introduce vocal strain on the part of the user. Such strain in detectable after use of the system for some time, and oftentimes does not significantly improve over time. Vocal fatigue involves a shift in the user's fundamental frequency (F0), and can progress to persistent hoarseness. What is needed is a new system that provides pure, digitized speech from the user's ear canal that is free from environmental noise, allowing the maximal optimization of the voice engine in order to increase the speed and accuracy of the voice speech to text. Such a system should preferably be wireless and allow for multiple methodologies for activation and deactivation of the input to the speech engine.